alt.hn

5/10/2026 at 3:32:59 AM

Xs of Y – roguelike that names itself every run. Written in 4kLoC

https://github.com/nooga/xsofy

by andsoitis

5/13/2026 at 8:02:50 PM

I killed myself with a flaming spear and the game said this:

> FATAL ERROR: [program exited] "cannot subtract nil and let-go.lang.Int", :data {:trace ("game-loop (<unknown>)" "game-loop (<unknown>)" "update-world (<unknown>)" "run-until-player-turn (<unknown>)" "creature-turn (<unknown>)" "update-ai-state (<unknown>)" "distance (<unknown>)")}}

A fatal error indeed!

by seabass-labrax

5/13/2026 at 11:12:25 PM

I got killed by a fire imp and crashed the same way.

by jdiff

5/13/2026 at 8:07:04 PM

Love it :D

by marcingas

5/14/2026 at 4:51:41 AM

Been having fun today trying to work this game out.

Questions:

1. How do I learn the magic/rune system? I can inscribe them on weapons & armour. Some are verbs and some are adjectives. I am yet to see obvious effects (edit: except for 'arc'), so I wonder if they always do things or often do nothing unless specific combinations are used (like subject-verb-object requirements of a sentence or certain weapon/armour+spell combo validity)?

2. What does "magic" mean when I try to inscribe more than one rune on a thing? Does this mean one rune is free but multiple require magic and are detrimental if you have none?

3. How do I interpret the weapon stats? Eg "Current: 3-5 -> 2-4"

Notes:

1. The game is much easier if I set my gamma up (xgamma -gamma 1.5). Most of the levels are very dark (10% of RGB values dark) so I easily miss items and routes to check otherwise.

2. There are a lot more keybinds than shown onscreen. 'x' to autoexplore, 'r' for a runes page I'm trying to work out. Shift+Z to autorest/heal. '>' will fasttravel you to the stairs down if you have already found them. Shift+direction will autowalk.

3. Don't press 'q'. There is no confirmatin prompt. There are no saves. Aieee :D

by hales

5/13/2026 at 5:44:02 PM

Author here! Thanks for posting! This game is written in a Clojure-like programming language I've made. So this is a (B)rogue-like in a Clojure-like :)

What I think is interesting is that this game computes the entire world state each tick and does so efficiently thanks to persistent data structures.

To anyone who dared to fire it up: thank you for playing, I'm curious what you think!

by marcingas

5/13/2026 at 10:10:13 PM

I did a quick run on the web version. I was able to sneak attack everything on the first two levels, which felt like a bug, but I'm honestly not sure.

When I found a spear, I kind of expected to be able to throw it, but I didn't find a throw option anywhere. I think that makes the short sword better in every case, but maybe I missed something.

Overall, I love the execution. Quality retro fun with a really nice interface.

by allknowingfrog

5/13/2026 at 10:25:41 PM

This totally is a bug. Was this recently? I thought I fixed this in WASM version.

by marcingas

5/13/2026 at 6:10:21 PM

The name let-go of your programming language is awesome!

by jackpirate

5/13/2026 at 6:13:37 PM

Thanks! Please check it out and leave me a star if you like it :)

by marcingas

5/13/2026 at 8:47:41 PM

This is awesome!

I'm interested in building something similar, any tips besides looking at what you've done and Brogue?

by onlyrealcuzzo

5/13/2026 at 10:07:19 PM

I'd say don't immediately go into making an ECS and don't sweat about perf too much. You can totally do this in any programming language. This is a good talk about roguelike software design in general: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=JxI3Eu5DPwE

Tbh the whole channel is a gold mine of inspiration. Also check: https://discord.gg/bgd2GrhR

by marcingas

5/13/2026 at 7:14:59 PM

Little buggy (dying from things not on the screen), but I love the dwarf fortress esque vibes

by biosubterranean

5/13/2026 at 7:32:49 PM

There was a commit a few minutes ago that fixed the instakills for me

by Oakwhisper

5/13/2026 at 7:36:17 PM

This was caused by a stdlib bug in the language, I bypassed it :D

by marcingas

5/13/2026 at 11:24:45 PM

My 15 year old's (who is a roguelike fanatic) first comment was: there's no diagonal movement?

"The visuals are interesting.... oh I died."

by cmrdporcupine

5/13/2026 at 11:57:50 PM

I don't have a numpad so it did not occur to me to add diagonals :D

Good feedback though, I'll add it. Thanks to your 15 year old!

by marcingas

5/14/2026 at 12:48:44 AM

most roguelikes also add (IIRC looking at my phone keyboard and reverse engineering muscle memory) yubn for diagonals.

by jdiff

5/13/2026 at 9:54:29 PM

"Applied theology with inadequate safety margins" might just be my favorite difficulty description ever.

by cheald

5/13/2026 at 5:42:20 PM

Gets stuck in a redirect loop with the message:

> Interactive input unavailable (no cross-origin isolation).

> Deploy coi-serviceworker-js alongside this file.

in Safari on 26.4

by Jeremy1026

5/14/2026 at 3:09:45 AM

Not sure how you feel about including sound, but I feel like there needs to be a warning sound that plays when you're low HP, like in Pokemon. I keep dying because I don't realize I'm at low health

by ssalka

5/14/2026 at 8:28:45 AM

Interesting idea... maybe it could send terminal bell or tint the screen red at low health?

by marcingas

5/14/2026 at 1:21:19 AM

let's not have q=quit. most rouge games have q=quaff. I mean if people want to quit, they can just refresh or close the tab. At the very least, ask.

by fhn

5/13/2026 at 4:45:06 PM

Pretty fun! I keep getting instantly killed by things though and I'm not sure why, possibly a bug.

by Parcival

5/13/2026 at 4:47:11 PM

I see you haven't played Noita!

by andai

5/13/2026 at 5:55:33 PM

Noita was another inspiartion when making this - the inverted power curve is real! Start squishy, become a god, die anyway.

by marcingas

5/13/2026 at 7:27:07 PM

A wand related accident has to be the number one cause of a Noita run ending.

by zardo

5/13/2026 at 8:17:17 PM

I feel this comment. Seriously though, damage reflection was one of the many insanely annoying things about that game.

by ticulatedspline

5/13/2026 at 6:18:35 PM

No, I think I'm seeing the same bug. Time seems to sometimes subjectively freeze:

    ─── Messages ───                                                                                                                                                                                                              
      Old man shuts the gate behind you. You hear him mutter "every time, I swear..."                                                                                                                                              
      You must retrieve the Amulet of Lost Semicolons.                                                                                                                                                                             
      You kill the rat! (sneak attack!)                                                                                                                                                                                            
      The rat squeals and dies!                                                                                                                                                                                                    
      You wait. (x10)                                                                                                                                 ᛜ                                                                            
    ᚢ You kill the rat! (sneak attack!)                                                             ᛉ                                                                                                                              
      The rat squeals and dies!                                                                                                                                                                                                    
      You hear muttering.                                                  ᛋ                                                                                                                                                       
      You hear muttering.                                                                                                                                                                                                          
      You hear muttering.                                                                                                                                                                                                          
      You hear a distant creak.                                                                                                                       ᛖ                                                     ᛃ                      
      The runestone crumbles as you touch it. You learn: ᛟ means "ice"!                                               ᛚ                                                                                                            
      You hear a distant creak.                                                                                                                                                                                                    
      The goblin misses you. (x3)                                                                                                                                                                                                  
      The goblin hits you for 4.                                                                                                                                                                                                   
      The goblin hits you for 3.                                                                                                           ᛏ                                                                                       
      The goblin hits you for 4.                                                                                                                                                                                                   
      The goblin hits you for 3.                                                                                                                                                                                                   
      The goblin misses you.                                                                                                 ᛚ                                                                                                     
      The goblin hits you for 4.                                                                                                                                                                                                   
      The goblin hits you for 2.                                                                                                                                                                                                   
      The goblin hits you for 4.                                                                                                                                                                                                   
      The goblin misses you.                                                                                                                                                                                                       
      The goblin hits you for 2.                                                                                                                                                                                                   
      The goblin misses you. (x2)                                                                                                                                                                                                  
      The goblin hits you for 2.                                                                                                                                                                                                   
      The goblin kills you!                                                                                                                                                                                                        
      You die...
Note how there were no user action messages during the time the goblin was attacking.

by CyberShadow

5/13/2026 at 6:24:01 PM

Definitely a bug. I'll look into this at some point. Please note that this is not a finished game by any means. If anyone asked I'd call it a tech demo at this point :)

by marcingas

5/13/2026 at 7:03:32 PM

Seems to be that the sort function accepts a ternary predicate but then passes it to an implementation accepting a boolean one?

by CyberShadow

5/13/2026 at 7:37:13 PM

Yeah that was it, the let-go stdlib changed.

by marcingas

5/13/2026 at 7:28:51 PM

I see the same but only in browser / wasm. Also notice that the mobs dont move in browser mode. Local via lg in console works great though.

by dpkp

5/13/2026 at 6:21:35 PM

yeah. something is wrong. You don't even get to fight back.

by fhn

5/13/2026 at 7:25:59 PM

I think I fixed it!

by marcingas

5/13/2026 at 5:26:10 PM

that's actually a beloved feature of "true" roguelikes

by devindotcom

5/13/2026 at 4:31:59 PM

Reminds me a lot of NetHack, good times

by gchamonlive

5/13/2026 at 6:28:20 PM

Not a Rogue-like specialist, it's hard – I haven't made it out of level 1 yet.

by pgt

5/14/2026 at 1:22:09 AM

I just got to lvl2 only because goblins aren't insta-killing me

by fhn

5/13/2026 at 4:20:19 PM

No credit for the art direction and inspiration? Brogue?

Or did I miss the attribution?

* Edit: I’m not looking for the downvotes or to stir things up. I’m simply calling out that this is a small niche community we notice these things, we’re very free with our code, and copy is a compliment, but so is attribution.

The author wasn’t so much inspired the by Brogue style, but copied it directly down to the animations and ASCII.

by sandoze

5/13/2026 at 4:25:12 PM

> No credit for the art direction and inspiration? Brogue?

In the age of LLMs the "author" might not even know where the art direction and inspiration came from!

by bayarearefugee

5/13/2026 at 5:47:51 PM

I know, this is intentional :)

I took things I like from Brogue and added my own spin on it.

by marcingas

5/13/2026 at 5:46:08 PM

yeah, this is a Brogue-like. I love Brogue and have been inspired by it. XsofY is not an exact clone but I've studied Brogue C source heavily when making this.

I'll link to Brogue in the README :)

by marcingas

5/13/2026 at 5:52:02 PM

Amazing and great work!

by sandoze

5/13/2026 at 4:23:46 PM

Calling it rogue-like is basically attribution since Brogue is just the follow-up to Rogue which invented the genre

by somewhatgoated

5/13/2026 at 4:32:17 PM

I’ll be sure to keep that in mind with my next plumber platformer

by sandoze

5/13/2026 at 6:11:50 PM

No one calls them plumber platformer though…

If you call it “Mario-like” then I would say most people would understand where the inspiration comes from.

by somewhatgoated

5/14/2026 at 3:30:45 AM

most people would name hack (1984) or the fork nethack (1987) as the successor to rogue (1980). brogue (2018) i never heard of till now but probably i aged out by then (aged out of spending many mindless i.e. repetitive hours of fun)

by fsckboy

5/14/2026 at 4:39:39 AM

Brogue was released in 2009 for what it’s worth.

by Widdershin

5/13/2026 at 11:56:24 PM

I'm a little confused. There were some differences, but this stuff is straight out angband/moria lineage stuff. https://angband.readthedocs.io/en/latest/version.html#previo...

by SubiculumCode

5/14/2026 at 12:51:24 AM

the lighting effects are very brogue and like nothing I've seen in angband, which is very very barebones ASCII by comparison. brogue-likes push into ANSI art territory with their abuse of terminal formatting.

by jdiff

5/14/2026 at 1:37:35 AM

Some of the many variants did expand on the ASCII graphics a bit, but yeah, I see what you mean.

by SubiculumCode

5/13/2026 at 5:47:29 PM

While I can see perhaps a claim of "inspiration", when I put Brogue & this side-by-side, while artistically there is similarity, I wouldn't say "copied".

Brouge isn't the only rouge-like with LoS mechanics.

by deathanatos

5/14/2026 at 1:47:37 AM

Sounds like its close to red.

by protocolture

5/13/2026 at 5:57:53 PM

Brogue is insanely well balanced and ingeniously designed. XsofY is a mere tribute ;)

by marcingas

5/13/2026 at 4:28:50 PM

Wouldn't the credit go to ... rogue?

by BeetleB

5/13/2026 at 4:33:27 PM

The genre of course. But this is almost a 1-1 copy of the Brogue style. Right down to the colors, animation, and ASCII

by sandoze

5/13/2026 at 5:27:18 PM

are you not familiar with the actual game rogue, or nethack?

by devindotcom

5/13/2026 at 5:40:38 PM

Yes. I don’t think we’re having the same argument though.

by sandoze

5/13/2026 at 4:25:20 PM

Noun of Noun

by Razengan

5/13/2026 at 4:23:59 PM

fun project!

by bennettpompi1

5/13/2026 at 4:58:31 PM

Found it a bit annoying having to press 'i' at the start in order to equip the dagger and armor that were on my backpack, but well done.

by otikik

5/13/2026 at 6:20:21 PM

yep. should be equipped from the start.

by fhn

5/13/2026 at 6:26:22 PM

Agree, will patch this.

by marcingas

5/13/2026 at 7:34:53 PM

fixed

by marcingas

5/13/2026 at 6:42:24 PM

[dead]

by butz

5/13/2026 at 9:22:04 PM

[dead]

by hope2

5/13/2026 at 6:49:51 PM

Isn't this the kind of thing you can essentially fully offload to Claude code these days? Don't really get the point of these tiny primarily llm generated game clones tbh.

by binary0010

5/13/2026 at 6:57:45 PM

I see your point but I like to think it's not as sloppy as you'd expect. This one is written in a programming language I've been making since 2021 and it's not a direct Brogue clone despite its looks.

by marcingas

5/13/2026 at 6:55:38 PM

Is this a troll comment? I don't see where the author used AI to generate the code and if you don't see the point of experimenting with technology, you're on the wrong website.

by frakt0x90

5/13/2026 at 7:42:26 PM

You really don't see where the author uses ai? Pretty much everywhere, all the docs, the overview of the project, a LOT of the code is obviously primarily ai written, etc.

by binary0010

5/13/2026 at 7:58:26 PM

So the author used the latest and greatest development tech to create a unique little demo in their custom language. I'm unsure your point. You know what I don't use to program with anymore? Punch cards and Borland C++. The industry has evolved for better or worse.

by sandoze

5/13/2026 at 8:47:29 PM

What are you going on about?

No idea what you think you are arguing. Are you in the wrong thread?

I said I don't get why people keep posting essentially vibe coded game clones... I get bored checking out GitHub projects on HN that are doing absolutely nothing new and are essentially baby projects made by Claude on a weekend, and terribly architected to boot. Cluttering the feed.

by binary0010

5/13/2026 at 8:02:44 PM

FWIW it's a good fuzz test for the interpreter ;)

by marcingas

5/13/2026 at 9:13:16 PM

Consider them prototypes. Like the games submitted to game jams.

by postalrat

5/13/2026 at 9:25:34 PM

I wouldn't even dare posting this to a game jam... or HN at this point but someone posted it for me, welp.

by marcingas

5/14/2026 at 3:40:53 AM

I guess it depends whats more important, getting the game in your head out where others can try it, or the process of building the game itself.

by postalrat

5/14/2026 at 8:07:15 AM

[dead]

by Andy_Donner